“She makes music as medicine...she knows how to reach people who are going through things.” — Tarik Moody, NPR Music When Aisha Badru started making music roughly a decade ago, the soulful singer-songwriter was thoughtful but also shy and hesitant. Her debut album Pendulum (2018) was a melancholic, sometimes fiery, musing on life’s highs and lows. In an industry that thrives on bravado and affectation, even after all her success, Aisha still presents herself as introspective and understated, but what has changed is that she tries to do everything with purpose. This, she chalks up to music’s life-changing impact on her, or “rewiring my mind,” as she likes to put it. Much of Badru’s magic lies in alchemy — distilling an often-tangled human experience into simple truths, quieting the cacophony to pave a path towards introspection. Her work is at once powerful and beautiful. “I’ve always sort of felt torn,” she admits, “between wanting to be someone who is very much a singer-songwriter and being recognized in the wellness space.” So now, she is doing both. With each EP release since Pendulum, this empath has been lovelorn, torn, and reborn. With her sophomore LP, The Sun Still Rises (Nettwerk), she plays the part of sage, beckoning us away from darknesses. “Yes, I’m an artist,” she continues. “But I’m very intentional about the music that I release: that it is medicinal, that it can soothe emotions. This album encapsulates the entirety of my growth.”